CANADIAN INTEREST IN NFL ON THE RISE

Exciting games and better TV access result in rising viewership numbers

NFL TV viewership in Canada continues to shoot up like a Hail Mary heaved by Aaron Rodgers, especially in prime time.

The average overall audience size for league games through the first two months of the 2018 season rose 19 per cent over last year, according to official Numeris ratings numbers provided to Postmedia by the league and Canadian TV rights holder Bell Media.

NFL TV viewership south of the border is up three per cent, reversing the trend of backto-back seasons of 10 per cent drops.

In Canada, average audiences through Week 8 (i.e., through October) have grown by doubledigit percentages in each of five weekly NFL game time slots, year over year:

Early Sunday afternoon: 890,000, up 12 per cent.

Late Sunday afternoon: 969,000, up 16 per cent.

Sunday night: 825,000, up 33 per cent.

Monday night: 597,000, up 12 per cent.

Thursday night: 634,000, up 12 per cent.

While Sunday daytime viewership in Canada by season’s end a year ago had declined eight per cent from 2016 in the early afternoon period, and by 12 per cent in late afternoons, this year’s gains so far have more than made up for those losses.

The early Sunday afternoon rise is due in part to Bell’s decision to carry games not only on CTV affiliates nationally and often on a TSN channel, but also on CTV2 stations, just as in the late Sunday afternoon window.

It’s in prime time where NFL viewership in Canada has skyrocketed over the past two years, when factoring in audience numbers provided to Postmedia from Bell Media this past January.

Take Sunday nights. Bell Media last year began simulcasting NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecasts on basic cable channel CTV2, in addition to pay channel TSN, and the average Canadian audience jumped from 362,000 to 622,000, up 42 per cent. Now it’s up to 825,000.

Similarly, domestic viewership for Thursday Night Football spiked 28 per cent last year (from 263,000 to 489,000) after Bell Media ceased contracting out that telecast to Rogers Sportsnet channels, and made room for it on both CTV2 and TSN. Now viewership is up to 634,000.

Monday Night Football airs exclusively on TSN. Last year, viewership rose eight per cent from 2016, to 536,000. Now it’s up to 597,000.

“For us, having football become part of the mainstream live sports culture in Canada is just fantastic,” Maryann Turcke, the NFL’s chief operating officer, said Thursday morning in a phone interview.

Turcke is Canadian, born and raised in Kingston, Ont.

The percentage increase of female viewership in Canada is up “over 20 per cent,” Turcke said, while adult male viewership north of the border rose 14 per cent through October.

“We’re thrilled with the work that’s being done in Canada, the NFL Canada team, as well as our broadcast partner Bell Media,” said Turcke, who holds engineering and business degrees from Queen’s University and the University of Toronto.

From 2014-17 Turcke was president of Bell Media, before joining the NFL as president of the league’s media arm. Last March, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell promoted Turcke to COO. In addition to overseeing the league’s media properties that include NFL Network and NFL. com, Turcke now runs the marketing, communications, human resources, international, events and technology departments.

Asked to explain the sharp rises in the NFL’s popularity on Canadian TV, Turcke said the following:

“There was a big change made a year ago in Canada, and we consolidated our broadcast rights with Bell Media, all in one family. And Bell Media really does a good job. (There is) thoughtful integration and work that CTV, TSN and RDS in Quebec have done to really promote the content, and promote the popularity of the sport.

“That, coupled with what has just been fantastic football.”

Indeed, offence and scoring are proceeding at record rates this NFL season.

“It has made for a perfect situation to grow the sport

(in Canada),” Turcke said.

An empirical study conducted for the NFL revealed there are 12 million NFL fans in Canada this year, Turcke said, up seven per cent from 2017.

“That’s a big number. That’s a third of the country,” she said. “We’re big in Canada, we’re going to get bigger and we’re going to stay, that’s for sure.”